


Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own

by Thats_Amore



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Clothes Shopping, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Gendered Expectations, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Mentioned Germany/North Italy (Hetalia) - Freeform, Misgendering, POV South Italy (Hetalia), Panic Attacks, References to Menstruation, References to Surgeries, Terrible Parents, Trans Finland (Hetalia), Trans Male Character, Trans South Italy (Hetalia), Transphobia, deadnaming, references to pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 16:27:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29969133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thats_Amore/pseuds/Thats_Amore
Summary: Savino could have had a good day while his husband was at work, but then his mother decided to call. He tries to make it through on his own, but eventually he reaches out for Alfred's support.
Relationships: America/South Italy (Hetalia)
Kudos: 13





	Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own

**Author's Note:**

> Savino deals with a lot of horrible things in this story, and I've tried to tag for them as as comprehensively as I can to avoid triggering readers. If you can think of any additional tags this story needs, please let me know. As a note, Savino does refer to past menstruation with the term "periods," which some readers may find triggering but I thought would be accurate for his character. Re: the deadnaming tag, his deadname is maliciously used against him, but I did not write the name itself into the story out of respect and will not specify what it is. This story is not fluffy or lighthearted, but I do hope that it is uplifting by the end. 
> 
> Title taken from the song of the same name by U2.

Savino’s day had actually started off okay. He didn’t have to go into work, but Alfred did, so Alfred had left before he’d even woken up. But his husband, true to cheesy form, had left Savino an incredibly sappy note on the nightstand before he’d left, and Savino grinned when he read it. Fredo’s sappiness could go over-the-top sometimes, but getting that kind of verbal affection from Alfred always boosted his mood. It was a nice way to start his day.

He did experience some bottom dysphoria, but wearing the packer mostly took care of that. He was able to look himself in the mirror as he was putting his shirt on, which he hadn’t been able to do before he’d gotten top surgery. Even with binders, Savino’s chest before the surgery had just felt wrong to him, but now he could look at himself shirtless and see the man he wanted to see. After fully getting dressed, he looked in the mirror, scrutinized his appearance, and decided that he could pass well enough. Nobody who saw him walking down the street would be able to automatically tell that he was afab. Savino looked like a guy. Maybe not a huge, buff guy with tons of muscles and a square jaw, but he looked satisfactorily male. He left the bedroom and decided to eat a quick breakfast before heading out to the mall to buy some new clothes for himself. It was a task he’d been putting off for a while, since trying to purchase men’s clothing that would fit his proportions was difficult and could aggravate his dysphoria, but Savino had time today and felt good enough about himself to try.

As he made himself breakfast and listened to the news on TV, Savino didn’t consciously think about anything gender-related. But as he was drinking his second cappuccino of the day, he heard his cell phone ringing in the living room, where he had forgotten it the night before. (He really needed to remember to charge that thing more.) It wasn’t one of his custom ring tones, so it could have been a variety of people: his boss, one of his doctors, some random person trying to sell him something. But when Savino went to go check it, his stomach twisted in anticipatory anxiety.

It was his mother. His mother was calling him.

Savino had a complicated relationship with his parents. They hadn’t outright rejected him and cut him out of their lives, but they were shitty about the fact he was trans. They insisted on thinking of him as their only daughter even though he’d explained repeatedly how he’d never been a girl, and nothing Savino did could ever change their minds. They didn’t know anything about who he was because they hadn’t made the effort to know. It’s not like Feliciano, Marcello, and Nonno instantly understood everything about trans issues when he first came out to them. But they had been willing to learn, to try, and they apologized sincerely for the few instances they accidentally used his deadname or referred to him with the wrong pronouns. Savino had given his parents years to adjust to this, and it hurt and angered him that they hadn’t. His mother and father acted like him being trans was something Savino had done out of spite to make their lives more difficult instead of simply who he was.

If it weren’t for Marcello, Savino probably wouldn’t have bothered with his parents anymore. But Marcello was his baby brother, and he was still living under their parents’ roof. If Savino didn’t talk to his parents anymore, he wouldn’t be able to talk to Marcello, and Marcello needed both of his older brothers at the moment. He had recently realized he was bi, just like both his brothers had before him. If he ever got a boyfriend and wanted to introduce him to his family, Marcello would have to put up with the same bullshit Feli had when he brought Ludwig home or that Savino had when he brought home any of his past girlfriends. (They were noticeably nicer to Al, but only because they saw it as a straight relationship, since they refused to see Savino as anything other than a girl. It was incredibly fucked up.) Savino didn’t want Marcello to go through their parent’s homophobic bullshit without his support, so he maintained sporadic communication with his parents despite the fact that conversations with them often felt like talking to a brick wall.

Savino contemplated just not answering the call. But his mother thought voicemails were “impersonal,” so she’d just call him back in thirty minutes if Savino let the phone ring. Savino might as well get this over with, so he answered just before his voicemail could pick up.

“Hey, Mamma. Sorry it took me so long to answer. I was eating breakfast in another room when I got your call.” Over the years, Savino had learned that it was best not to tell his parents the complete truth about his life. He had told his mother and father that he and Al had eloped at City Hall because they didn’t want to spend a ton of money on a huge ceremony. That was true, but it was also because Savino didn’t want his parents to ruin the best day of his life by trying to make him wear a bridal gown. The ceremony was smaller than Savino would have ideally preferred since he couldn’t invite his brothers or his grandfather without inviting his parents too, but getting married without the family who supported him was better than getting misgendered on his fucking wedding day.

She chuckled warmly, and for a moment Savino let himself believe that his mother loved him for who he was. “That’s late, even for you. I’m guessing you don’t have to go into work today?”

Savino confirmed that he had the day off, and the conversation proceeded in a deceptively pleasant manner from there. His mother asked him what he and Alfred had been up to lately, and Savino answered truthfully about various mundane subjects, but he didn’t bring up his recent chest surgery. It was something he would mention to the people he was close to, but sadly, Savino hadn’t felt close to his mother in a long, long time. And he didn’t want to hear any disparaging comments about how he had “mutilated” himself by getting a medically necessary procedure that had significantly improved his life. Savino would tell anyone who pulled that kind of transphobic crap on him to fuck off and die, but he was human, and words like that stung, especially when they came from his own family.

Savino could sense that his mother was skirting around the real reason she had called him, but eventually she brought it up. “Are you and Alfred considering having children any time soon? Your father and I would _love_ to be grandparents.” The words were nice enough, but Savino could detect the edge of impatience underneath. And he felt a bit nauseous at the thought of exposing any of his future children to his parent’s toxicity. The fact that he still had to deal with them was bad enough.

“We… we’ve discussed it,” Savino answered quietly. “It’s something we want to do eventually, but right now isn’t a good time for us, financially speaking. And logistically, it’s complicated.” Savino wanted to get a phalloplasty, and he wasn’t sure if health insurance would cover everything. Even if it did, he would need time to recover from that, and he wouldn’t be able to look after a child right after he’d gotten major surgery. Savino wanted to be a father, but he also wanted to be in a more settled place with his transition before he took such a major step in his life. Alfred understood and supported him completely.

But his mother didn’t. She sighed like she was disappointed in him. Of course, she was perpetually disappointed in him for not being the daughter she had expected. “It doesn’t have to be complicated. Even with the things you’ve done to yourself, you can still get pregnant. Your body is _designed_ to get pregnant.”

“My body isn’t designed for fucking shit!” Savino knew of trans men who had carried their own children, and he respected whatever decisions they made for themselves, but pregnancy wasn’t something he could ever consider doing. The physical process of carrying a child and giving birth, along with all the social crap he’d have to deal with if he went off T and became visibly pregnant, sounded like a dysphoric nightmare to Savino. Just thinking about it right now made him heave for air in an attempt to avoid vomiting.

“I really wish you wouldn’t curse so much. It’s not very ladylike of you.”

“Because I’m not a goddamn lady! I’m a man, and I wish you and Papà would acknowledge that for once! Maybe you should think about that before you suggest that I put myself through something that would make me want to die!” God, he hated yelling at his mother like this, especially because his voice tended to get higher when he was upset. He might believe that he was a man enough to scream that truth in rage, but what good were his convictions when his own vocal chords betrayed him?

There was a pause, a long, telling pause. When his mother spoke, her voice was clipped. “There’s no need to be so dramatic.” And then, to top off her invalidating comment, she referred to him by his deadname, and Savino knew that she did it on purpose.

“That’s not my name, stronza, and you fucking know it.”

“It’s the name your father and I picked out for you! If you respected us—”

“Respect?! Are you fucking kidding me?! If you respected me, you wouldn’t insist on calling me something you know makes me feel like shit, and you wouldn’t tell me what to do with my own goddamn life. Until you and Papà can learn to treat me with the bare minimum of decency, I’m not gonna have anything more to do with either of you.” Savino hung up his phone before his mother could say anything else, and he held his fist to his mouth before he could burst into sobs. Savino knew had every right to be upset, but there was this annoying voice in the back of his head telling him that boys didn’t cry, and that grown men especially didn’t cry. It sounded remarkably like his father’s, because that was the same garbage he’d told Feli and Marcello. But never Savino, because his father had never seen him as a boy, no matter how tough and masculine he tried to be.

Savino thought briefly of calling Alfred, but his husband was busy. It wouldn’t be fair to call him for every little problem, even though his problems felt gargantuan at the moment. He’d called his mother a stronza, and she would probably never forgive him for that, even though she was the one who’d been in the wrong. He might not be able to speak to Marcello again until he was old enough to go to university, at least not without making sure they kept it off their parent’s radar and getting Feliciano to help them.

He ran his hands through his hair and groaned. “And I thought today wouldn’t be a total shitshow.” He’d been happy when he woke up, and his dysphoria was at a manageable level. But of course his parents had to ruin what would have otherwise been a good day for Savino. That seemed to be their goal in life, to make Savino give up, curl up into a ball of misery, and die.

But he hadn’t gotten where he was in life by listening to his parents, and he didn’t want to let them ruin his day. He wasn’t exactly happy right now, but Savino could still go shopping. He pushed his feelings down to deal with later, made sure he had his keys and his wallet, and walked out the door.

* * *

On the way to the mall, Savino listened to a CD that Timo, a guy in his trans support group, had recommended to him. Heavy metal wasn’t a style of music Savino would normally be into, but he grown to find the genre weirdly relaxing when he was pissed off at the state of the world. And right now, he was enraged at his shitty parents and needed something to put him in a calmer frame of mind.

Savino felt okayish by the time he parked his Fiat outside a department store. At least okayish enough to browse for clothes without looking like he was going to murder someone. Once inside the department store, he made a beeline straight for the men’s section. Dress shirts were easier for him now after the chest surgery, as long as they came in a small enough size. He was relatively lucky that he didn’t have to shop in the boy’s section, like some trans guys did. Timo was even smaller than he was, and he’d talked in group about how humiliating it was to look for clothes in the same section as his own son and how he had a problem finding things that fit him and were suitable for professional situations. It could have been a lot worse.

Savino checked the sales rack first, and the selections in his size were few and dismal. He quickly glanced at the size Alfred would wear and felt jealous of his husband. Sure, most of those were dismal too, but Alfred had a lot more options than he did, because he was a size that clothing manufacturers considered more normal for a man. Because he was cis, so he grew to a size Savino couldn’t dream of achieving.

No, that wasn’t true. Shorter height ran in his family. His brothers weren’t that much taller than him, Savino tried to convince himself.

He saw some shirts displayed on the wall that looked promising. But when he walked up to take a closer look, the smalls and extra smalls were hung far, far above the ground. Alfred might not be able to reach them, and he wasn’t sure if Ludwig or his nonno could either. He doubted that whatever tall guy who could easily reach that would be the same size as him.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Savino muttered to himself.

A soft giggle made him turn his head, and he noticed a sales associate walking up to him. She was taller than him, which wasn’t saying much. Lots of people were taller than him, including women.

“Need any help, sir?”

Savino felt his face heating up with embarrassment as he pointed over to the style of shirts he wanted to try on. “I… I’d like to look at one of those shirts on the wall, but I can’t reach it.” He felt humiliated at having to point out how short he was, how that made him incapable of doing something as basic as picking out a shirt. His skin was beginning to crawl, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could stay here.

To her credit, the sales associate simply pulled out an extendable reaching tool without making a big fuss over it. “Sure. What size are you?”

“Small, I think.” The last thing Savino needed was to be _extra small_ , because those words were even more telling than “small” was. The number of cis men who were small wasn’t that big to begin with, but the number who were “extra small” was even less. What if she could tell he wasn’t cis?

The sales associate reached out with her tool to pull down a small and got an extra small too. “It’s hard to tell, but I think you might be an extra small in this brand. You’ve got a fairly slender build for a guy.”

Savino laughed uneasily. “Yeah, I’ve been told that before.” He knew logically that he was short and slender compared to a lot of men, both trans and cis. And he knew that the sales associate was probably just trying to do her job and had no idea of the kind of insecurities he had, insecurities that no surgeries or hormones could ever fix. Most of the time, Savino could accept who he was, but some days were harder than others, to the point that he didn’t like people describing his body at all, even in a neutral, non-judgmental way.

He had thought today wouldn’t be one of those days, but apparently, he was wrong.

She smiled as she handed the shirts over to him. “I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. A lot of people think short guys are cute.” She gave him a wink, and Savino realized she was flirting with him. He might have felt flattered on a normal day, but that word, _cute_ … Dio, that was one of the worst words she could have chosen. Couldn’t he be gorgeous? Attractive? Handsome? Manly? For a moment, he wondered if Alfred even saw him that way. His idiota wouldn’t know how to lie if his life depended on it, and Savino _knew_ that, but he couldn’t shake the paranoid thought from his head.

“I’m married,” Savino said awkwardly. It was the best way to dispel the flirting without getting into subjects he couldn’t explain to a total stranger.

Her smile didn’t dim at all. Maybe she hadn’t been flirting, and it was just a customer service thing. “Do you need anything else?”

“I’m fine. Grazie for the um… for the help.”

She nodded politely at him, and Savino turned to walk away. He wasn’t going to cry in the middle of a department store over one awkward interaction, he told himself. For fuck’s sake, she probably wasn’t even wondering if her customers were trans or not. Most people really didn’t pay that much attention. But the signs in himself were too obvious for him to bear. He was short, he was “slender,” and he didn’t feel like much of a man at all.

He found a few other shirts that seemed decent and went to the dressing room. It was far from his worst experience in a dressing room, but Savino had a hard time looking at himself in the mirror. Were his cheeks too round, his jaw too soft? It certainly didn’t look like it could cut steel. Savino didn’t normally care about his neck, but now he was beginning to wonder if he looked suspiciously feminine without an Adam’s apple. Savino hated that the sleeves were so long on every shirt he tried on. The hem could be tucked in and was in fact designed to be worn that way, but he’d have to fix the sleeves himself. Alfred had never probably had to worry about sleeves that were too long a day in his life, the lucky bastard.

Savino’s chest was okay, and he didn’t have an hourglass figure, but that was small consolation when so much of his body just didn’t feel right. And he hated that the sales associate had been right about his size. He was somewhere between an extra small and a small in that one shirt that had been hanging up so high on the stupid wall. Neither one of them fit quite the way they were supposed to, so he’d humiliated himself by asking for help for no goddamn reason.

Three of the shirts would be decent if he tailored the sleeves, so Savino picked those to purchase and left the others in the designated area. He went up to the counter, answered “yes” when the cashier asked him if he’d found everything he was looking for, and even managed to say “you too” when he bid him a nice day. But the pleasantry felt like a mask, and everything else did too. He felt like everyone he passed on the way out of the mall could see him, could know all the things about his history that weren’t any of their business, and were secretly judging him for it.

He managed to stave off a breakdown until he was inside his car. After tossing the bag of shirts into the backseat, he hit the steering wheel with his fists and screamed. “Che cazzo?! Can’t I get a break for once in my goddamn life?!”

His face was hot, and Savino was reasonably sure that tears were streaming down his face. He couldn’t do this on his own, and he knew that would make him weak and less of a man in the eyes of people like his father. But today had felt like a goddamn war, and Savino was officially surrendering, even if it was cowardly.

He didn’t know if Alfred was free to talk on the phone right now, so Savino sent him a text message.

_I’ve been having a HORRIBLE day. My mom was awful and my dysphoria is making me feel like absolute shit. If it’s remotely possible for you to come home early today, I’d appreciate it._

He only had to wait a couple of minutes before Alfred replied.

_I’m so sorry honey. I’ll be home as soon as I can. I’ll fake being sick or something._

Another message popped up quickly.

_Do u think ice cream and cuddles would help? I can pick up that 1 brand of gelato u like from the grocery store on my way home._

Savino was already starting to feel better with the idea of gelato and cuddles from Alfred. _That would help a lot. Thank you, caro. I love you._

Savino chuckled when he saw Alfred’s last text message. _I love you too! C u soon!_ 💞 ❤️ 💝 👨❤️👨

He was nowhere near feeling normal, but he was able to wipe his eyes and drive home, knowing he had something positive to look forward to.

* * *

Savino had arrived home only a few minutes before Alfred. He was able to put his new shirts by the sewing machine to be tailored later, and when he returned to the living room, Alfred was bursting through the door with the promised gelato in a shopping bag. Alfred darted over to Savino and flung his arms around him.

“I love you so much, Vinny, and I hate that you had such a hard time today. I’d do anything in the world to make you feel better.”

Savino sighed and breathed in his husband’s cologne. Ironically, Savino had known a lot more about cologne than Alfred when they first met. Without guidance, Alfred tended to use way too much Axe Body Spray, while Savino had carefully mastered the art of using masculine scents in a way that was subtle but not overpowering. Savino had learned so much about cologne because he wanted to smell like a man in a sophisticated way, but also because part of him felt that his ability to pass was dependent on a multitude of subtle signals cis men like Alfred would never even need to consider. Everything he had gone through today made Savino worry that people were seeing him as someone he wasn’t because of things he couldn’t change.

“Go dish up the gelato before it melts, and I’ll tell you everything.”

“Mmkay.” Alfred pressed a quick kiss to the side of his head. “I’ll be back in a sec.”

Savino sat down on the couch, and soon Alfred returned with two small bowls of gelato. Alfred handed one of the bowls over to him and put an arm around him immediately.

“So, you mentioned there was stuff with your mom and dysphoria? I guess you can start wherever you want.”

Savino paused to take a bite of gelato and savored the lemon flavor. “I guess I’ll start with my mom, since she was kind of talking about you too.” Savino explained everything that happened in the phone call, and Alfred’s face turned stormy as he learned how she had told Savino his body was “designed” for pregnancy and then used his deadname immediately after he tried to stand up for himself.

“Do you want me to kill her for you? Because I’m seriously considering doing it.” Alfred didn’t sound like he was kidding.

Savino sighed. “That wouldn’t help. I already fucked things up by calling her a stronza. Now she and my father will keep me from ever seeing Marcello. I wanted so much to be a good brother to him, but I won’t be able to do that.”

“You’re an _amazing_ brother. I’ve seen how you are with Feli and Marcello. And Marcello is gonna understand it isn’t your fault if you can’t talk to him for a while. Maybe if you tell Feli what happened, he can make sure to explain it for you.”

Savino nodded somberly. He could try that. He wasn’t sure how well that would work, since Feli’s relationship with his parents was already strained due to how they treated Ludwig with such clear disdain, simply because he was a man. But Alfred was a man, and the first time they had met Alfred, the first man he had ever introduced to them, they fawned over him like he was the greatest thing since sliced bread. And it wasn’t because they had any clue how wonderful Alfred actually was. It was because they saw Savino as a woman, and the women he had been with as deluded lesbians. They’d hoped when he starting dating Alfred, that he’d “go back to normal” and that he’d quit being trans or bi.

“Babe, what’s wrong? Is it the other stuff you went through today? I know sometimes it’s hard for you to talk about that, but I’m here and I want to listen if you can.”

Savino shook his head bitterly. “I’ll tell you that later, but that wasn’t what I was thinking just now. You remember when you first my parents? How nice they were to you?”

Alfred’s arm squeezed around his shoulders. “Yeah, I remember. But they were fucking horrible to you. They should have never showed me those old pictures of you when you were a kid. I never liked them after they hurt you like that.”

Savino shoved a spoonful of gelato into his mouth in a desperate attempt to calm down. He remembered that night. By then, Alfred knew he was trans. He’d known that before they even started dating. But he’d never seen how Savino had looked pre-testosterone, pre any attempts to socially present as a man, back when he was made to keep his hair long and put in frilly dresses that allegedly made him look “pretty.” Before he’d even known he was transgender but knew that he was miserable in his body and miserable in the roles that kept getting foisted upon him because of that body. So when his parents brought out that old photo album, it had brought up a lot of painful memories and scared Savino half to death. He had been half-convinced that Alfred would leave him or that the man he’d loved would never see him as a man.

But after they had both left, Alfred told him his real thoughts on the photo album. How he’d hated seeing those pictures because they didn’t represent who Savino was and weren’t how Savino wanted anyone to see him. How he liked more recent pictures of Savino a lot more, not because he looked more masculine, but because he more looked happy and confident in contrast to the clearly depressed boy in those old photographs. Alfred’s face had turned a rosy shade of pink as he admitted that Savino’s smile was the greatest thing he’d ever seen, that it made his stomach do somersaults, and that he’d do anything he could to give Savino plenty of reasons to smile. That was the moment when Savino knew, deep down, that he was going to marry Alfred someday.

Savino swallowed his bite of gelato and tried to figure out how to explain it. “It’s not that I wanted them to treat you badly, but I think they were only so friendly to you because they saw you as a straight guy who could convert me back to being normal. They were a lot colder to my ex-girlfriends, and Feli has complained a lot about how they treat Ludwig.”

Alfred made an uncomfortable noise. “Yeah, that’s messed up. I’m not straight. You’re the only person I’ve ever been attracted to, and you’re clearly a dude, so that doesn’t make any fucking sense.”

Savino snuggled in closer to him. “Even when it seems like they’re being nice, it’s only because they’re erasing both of us. I knew not to trust it when my mom seemed nice at first, but a tiny part of me was really hoping things would be different this time.” He sounded bitter, and he felt bitter too.

“She’s your mom. I think part of you is always gonna want things to be different. But you did the right thing by telling her off. If she can’t respect who you are as a person, she doesn’t deserve to talk to you. You deserve the best, Vinny.”

They finished their gelato and they set the bowls on the coffee table. Savino didn’t feel like leaving the couch, and Alfred didn’t seem like he wanted to go anywhere either.

Alfred ran his fingers slowly and gently through Savino’s hair. “Are you ready to talk about it?” he whispered. “The dysphoria?”

Savino turned his face into Alfred’s shirt. “It wasn’t that bad before my mom called. Just some mild bottom dysphoria, but I deal with that all the time. I think it was how she brought up pregnancy. I used to have nightmares about what that would feel like, but I haven’t thought about it nearly as much since I stopped having periods. We never even have the kind of sex that could get me pregnant, so it’s not an issue for us. But then I started imagining it, and just… no. Cazzo, I’d die if that happened to me.”

He could feel Alfred sighing deeply. “I hate that she made you think of something so painful.”

“I fucking hate that my body could even do that. I really need to get a hysterectomy and oophorectomy. I was gonna do that anyway, because it’s recommended before the phalloplasty and to prevent certain kinds of cancer, but now I have even more reason to.”

“I support anything that will give you peace of mind.” Alfred paused to make sure Savino didn’t have anything else to add on this particular topic. “Anything else?”

“I guess all that shit was in the back of mind, and it spiraled when I was shopping for clothes today.” Savino began ranting about everything else he’d dealt with that day. How he was sure his voice got higher when he was screaming at his mom. How he’d felt bad about being smaller than most men and so short that he had to ask for help at the mall. How the woman who had helped him was taller than he was and had thought his height was “cute.” How he couldn’t look in the mirror because he was starting to worry about his lack of an Adam’s apple and the softness of his face. How the sleeves were too long on everything he tried on, even the shirts that otherwise fit. How he began to feel jealous and almost resentful of Alfred because he looked like a normal man, and everyone thought so, while Savino had to work so hard and wasn’t sure how much he could ever succeed. Finally, gasping through sobs, he confessed that part of him didn’t even feel like it was okay to cry about this shit or ask for help, because that was weak, men were supposed to be tougher than that, and if he cried, it was falling into stereotypes and confirming the idea that he was nothing but a hysterical, weepy woman.

Alfred let him rant for a while, and when he was done pulled him into a hug and kissed the top of his head. “You’re not weak for crying or asking for help. I would’ve cried if I had to put up with all the crap you did today. Heck, I cry if I see something scary in a movie. I’ve cried at Hallmark commercials before.”

“You get to, Fredo. When you do, it doesn’t mean what it does for me.”

“People suck. I can’t tell you that they don’t. But anyone who isn’t a total asshole isn’t gonna judge you for being human and having emotions. I’m glad you reached out to me when it got really bad and decided to tell me all this stuff. That’s a really brave thing to do, especially when you get society telling you it isn’t okay to do.”

That did make Savino feel marginally better. His sobs softened to silent weeping, and Alfred continued.

“You’ve got a nice voice, Vinny. Most of the time it’s deeper than mine. I’m pretty sure everyone’s voice can change under certain circumstances. I can get pretty high-pitched if I’m scared of a ghost or something like that. Remember that one time I went to a haunted house and freaked out when the guy jumped at me?”

Savino snorted. “You shrieked and clung to me in terror. I don’t understand why you thought it was a good idea to go to a haunted house in the first place.”

“Your voice is the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard, especially when it gets all low and seductive. It's really hot when you start talking in Italian. All you have to do is say a few words, and I’m instant putty in your hands. If that’s not masculine, I don’t know what is.”

Savino grinned. He could tell that Alfred, as usual, was being completely, 100 percent honest, and the compliments were starting to help him feel better. “I still wish I was taller,” he admitted. “That bothered me a lot today, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, I think you’re perfect the way you are. Being shorter or smaller than me doesn’t make you any less of a man. It sucks that they made the sleeves too long, but that means the clothing manufacturer screwed up, not that there’s anything wrong with you. And that display of shirts on the wall was a dumb idea. That’s why the employee had that grabby tool thingamajig when she helped you. Because a lot of people were probably having a hard time getting those shirts.”

“My brothers aren’t that much taller than me.”

“Exactly. A lot of guys are shorter than average, including cis guys. As for that lady calling you cute— I’m pretty sure she was into you, but she might’ve thought it was weird to tell some guy she just met how hot and sexy he is. Or maybe it’s like how I mean it when I call you cute on a day that word doesn’t bother you. Like ‘you’re incredible, and you make my heart explode just like when I see a box of adorable puppies.’ It doesn’t mean you aren’t manly too.”

Savino laughed. “I don’t think the sales associate at the mall was in love with me, tesoro.”

“She might have been. You’re super easy to fall in love with. Trust me, I’d know.”

Savino shifted up to kiss Alfred, and Alfred returned the kiss, opening his mouth so Savino could kiss him more deeply. He groaned when Savino’s tongue slipped into his mouth, and he was flushed and short of breath when Savino pulled away.

“For the record, I love everything about your face. Your eyes… your lips… your nose, even. I just…”

Savino traced a finger over the shell of Alfred’s ear. “I adore your face too, amore.”

“Even my chipmunk cheeks?”

“Especially your chipmunk cheeks.” He pecked both of them to make Alfred giggle and settled back into his husband’s side with a content huff.

“Are you feeling good enough to watch some TV?”

Savino yawned. “Sure. Put on whatever you feel like.” He was too exhausted from the day he had to care that much about what was on TV.

As Alfred scrolled through the channel guide, it wasn’t as if everything had been fixed. Savino’s dysphoria was still there in the back of his mind, though it had been reduced to a lower ebb. His parents were still awful human beings, and it bothered him that they refused to simply acknowledge who he was and let him be. But with his husband by his side, ready to support him in any way he needed, Savino felt like he could allow himself to relax, at least for the time being.


End file.
